At this stage, a World Cup-themed Pointless Celebrities repeat followed by another outing for Dale Winton’s new beard on In It To Win It is looking a much safer bet for Saturday night lolz.

BGT has become one massive focus group for Cowell’s record label and the worst thing is no one is even trying to disguise it.

Stooges: David Walliams, Alesha Dixon and Amanda Holden (Photo: Rex)

All his co-judges have been sticking to the script like kidnap victims reading a ransom note with a gun to their head.

I’d buy your album. (No, you wouldn’t.) Simon should sign you up now. (He probably already has.) That could be a No.1 record. (In Finland perhaps.)

There’s a gap in the market for a band like you. (It’s by the tills in Asda.) My kids would love to go to your concerts. (I want free tickets and a ­complimentary taxi.)

It’s sickening to watch. In an ideal world, such craven ­desperation to cling on to their jobs would be reason enough for all three to lose them before next year. That judging panel could certainly do with freshening up.

Elsewhere, when Cowell hasn’t been scouting for potential acts to bolster his range of Mother’s Day gifts, he’s been pursuing an impossible dream – finding another SuBo moment.

Let it go, Si. SuBo was a one-off. A ­brilliant and beautiful one-off, for sure.

But her story was so perfect that every other lame-arsed, Disney-fied idea you come up with is destined to meet with a wall of indifference.

Non-specific bullying victims? Snore. Someone whose partner just dumped them? Boohoo. An ­immigrant who is so grateful to have been allowed to live in this country? A tiny bit patronising.

It’s been heading this way for years of course. The endgame just seems a little more brazen lately.

I don’t know what I find more galling – Cowell booking random acts from his record label to perform on the results shows or his One Direction boys dutifully posting tweets praising the likes of schoolboy rappers Bars And Melody.